Use abuse

Which would you miss most? The daily postal delivery, access to email, or your mobile handset?

My parents’ generation anticipated a post that contained hand-written correspondence, not just bills and bank statements. My students depend on their mobiles. My settled personal and professional circumstances mean that mid-tech email is ideal. I have even argued that it was email, not the web, that was the internet’s ‘killer application’.

But what if the killer app dies? Prescient voices are already talking about the death of email, dragged down by spam and virus attacks. For a view on the problem, and some suggestions about solutions, read this by Dan Gillmor and the many resulting comments.